Erratum: "by now emphasizing orbital launch" -> "by NOT emphasizing
orbital launch"
(trying to help someone with Windows 10 remotely without screen share at
the same time yields erroneous typing reflex macros)
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 4:38 PM, James Bowery <jabowery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
No one has reusable orbital stages. The gating problem is a reusable
booster. Even if both SpaceX and Blue Origin have, from the start, placed
equal engineering priority on making their boosters to be reusable, the
"out of their own pocket" expense of testing reusability (of which return
landing is only a part) is limiting on the learning curve and the learning
curve is limiting on first-to-orbit on a reusable booster.
It seems to me that Blue Origin, by now emphasizing orbital launch, has
greater freedom to emphasize low cost tests of reusability of their
booster. Once they have that, they can basically just scale, purchase an
orbital stage and be done.
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 2:14 PM, Stephen Van Sickle <sjv2006@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 7:34 AM, James Bowery <jabowery@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think it quite possible if not probable that Blue Origin will be the
first to launch a commercial satellite to _orbit_ on a reused first stage
and do so economically.
How do you figure that? Blue Origin isn't close to orbiting anything at
all at this point, whereas SpaceX does so routinely. Having now recovered
intact a first stage from an orbital launch, SpaceX could give it a try on
their very next launch, if it were a high enough priority for them to do so
out of their own pocket with a dummy payload. More likely they will take a
conservative approach and test the hell out of several recovered stages
until a paying customer comes along willing to use a recovered stage. But
even that could be less than a year.